Tornado Dreams Warn Graduate Student of Real-Life Political

Tornado Dreams Warn Graduate Student of Real-Life Political Windstorm

source: http://www.fireflysun.com/book/DREAM_FAQ.php

(tornado pics not included, see link)

Over the course of months I scattered muses about the torrent of
tornado nightmares I experienced as a graduate student in Psychology.
Having been a graduate student in multiple psychology programs ("move
over, storm chasers"), I learned to expect within hours of the dream
some threat or recrimination, delivered formally by letter or
personally in a closed door castigation, stemming from some manner in
which I behaved unconventionally or failed to behave in accordance
with expectations. Just as tornadoes can take numerous forms
(your "wedge," "rope," and "classic funnel" twisters), the ways I
could deviate from expectations far outnumbered the deviations I
could imagine...or predict. Even after a tornado dream warned me that
a dizzying imbroglio was imminent, I was just as unable to anticipate
the source of the "storm" as meteorologists are to pinpoint the when
and the where of a twister in a tornado watchbox. But the variety of
storm shapes and sizes is really beside the point, the point being
that you do not want to be caught in the path of a professor\'s peeve,
penchant, or political peccadillo. In a nutshell, the moment a
psychologist gets it in his or her head that this is appropriate or
right, it becomes your business to know and to conform to that value.
The consequences for failing to do so may include heavy rain, wind
gusts in excess of 200 mph, withdrawl from your doctoral program,
large hail...


The lawfulness with which my tornado dreams preceded the adverse
event continues to astound me. Over my 3 1/2 year tenure as a
graduate student, I must have reported at least 15 tornado dreams,
each of which, without exception, preceded the kind of recriminating
episode (the one you couldn\'t see coming) that made my heart go
pitter patter. In fact, I could also say that no recriminating
episode came to pass without having been preceded by a tornado dream.
Naturally, as soon as I\'d awaken, I apprise my wife of the tornado
dream and being familiar with the legacy of this motif, would gasp
with fatalistic awe. She knew, as I, that a threat would materialize
within hours, but we were helpless to diagnose the source of the
adversity. Sure, we\'d make some guesses. A tornado dream could
trigger hours of speculating and conspiracy theorizing. But we were
never right. Some part of me knew to expect something that it also
knew I did not -- and could not -- expect.


I have often compared Psychology to Meteorology. In both cases, the
objects of study are quite dynamic and resistant to prediction. But
meteorologists have enjoyed relatively greater success because they
have been able to identify all the critical ingredients in a recipe
for a weather event (e.g. moisture, temperature, pressure).
Psychologists have not been so successful, but they have also not
been so disposed. Psychologists gave up on modeling the personality
years ago. Through broad exploratory methodologies like those I
designed to probe the relationship between dreaming and waking
experience, I hope to take the first steps toward identifying the
parameters that might allow me to understand, if not predict, the
content or characteristics of dreams. This is not something my
colleagues in Psychology are keen on. If they worked for NASA, the
Hubble telescope would have fallen into disrepair years ago, and
certainly there\'d be no reconnaissance of the outer planets (like
Cassini of Saturn). The lack of intellectual curiosity coupled with a
fetish for the technical merits of science would have psychologists-
turned-NASA-mission-officials testing the effects of weightlessness
on tiny screws for decades! The true Neil Armstrongs of this field
(or more accurately, the "would-be" Armstrongs who will likely not be
admitted into the fraternity) would describe progress in this field
as "one small step forward for man, three giant steps backward for
mankind."


I never really recorded in my diary enough details about the
appearance of the tornado to support a cross-dream comparison. I
think I would have enjoyed after all these years an opportunity to
correlate characteristics of the tornado with fine distinctions in
the adverse events they preceded. What follows is a purely
speculative, non-data-driven hypothesis about what kind of tornadoes
might precede what kind of events.


Profile of Common Storms


......Theory. This is the rope tornado. These tornadoes are so gaunt
as to appear harmless. But they cause some of the most severe damage
known to careers. Do not include "Jungian" or "dream researcher"
among the list of self-descriptive adjectives you provide during
the "tell me a little about yourself" section of orientation. Some
closet behaviorist on faculty may be taking notes. More broadly, beat
down the urge to align yourself with any school of thought or
identify your focus of research. It\'s not like any one else really
wants to know anyway. You\'d be better off steering clear of
Psychology in your introductions to the faculty at large by referring
to yourself as, well, anything from a "Buffy enthusiast" to a "good
square dancer." Personally, I recommend "para-sailing." It shows you
have an active life outside Psychology, which for some reason is very
important to most clinical psychologists, who regard it as a
prerequisite for mental health. What does that tell you? But most
importantly, it\'s a hobby in which no one else, well, let\'s just say
you won\'t have to worry about other students or profs requesting to
join you, which brings me to my next storm.


......Participation. There is no such thing as a "request" or even
a "suggestion." When a psych prof "suggests" you do something,
especially when he or she "has a suggestion for you" in those words,
you take it as you would any standing order from a drill sergeant.
Choice of the word "suggest" is symptomatic of an attempt at managing
an impression as a populist ("I\'m a good guy, man of the people") and
benevolent deity ("God of the New [most modern] Testament") as well
as being symptomatic of the time-tested expectation that you will
throw yourself on the suggestion like a selfless soldier on a live
grenade.


This is the tornado you don\'t see because a dry, windy day produced a
funnel with relatively little condensed vapor near the ground. In
another, less metaphorical way, you don\'t see this tornado because
it\'s rooted in deception and lack of communication. There is a lot of
hard policy and procedures that live between the lines of anything
written in a department handbook (even one written to resemble a
Department of Defense Operations Manual). When the department head
goes out of his way to let you know attendance at weekly colloquia is
not mandatory, what he really means is that it is an opportunity to
prove your devotion to the department. More often than not, the
faculty are noting who\'s been naughty (not attending) and who\'s been
nice, and come Christmas, you can find more than a few lumps of coal
in your stocking. Just remember that if they had required attendance,
they would have had no way of knowing for sure who is a team player
and who is not. Some may call this \'entrapment.\' But as far as
meteorology is concerned, it\'s as ingrained a feature in the program
climate as barometric pressure. Also, pay your graduate student
association dues, even before your electric bill, no matter how
little interest you have in this straw authority, no matter how
little interest you have in the golf outings, and how little interest
you have in watching the pet rat walk a tightrope for the department
talent show. They want to know you like them. If you don\'t
communicate to them that you view yourself as fitting in, they will
most likely decide you don\'t fit in. And this includes letting them
know how much interest you take in your professional development. You
need to appear to be looking into joining extracurricular research
teams in the hopes of becoming the sixth author on as many four-page
publications as possible. I don\'t care how frivolous the research,
how much it may wreak havoc with your thesis schedule, or how
meaningless a role you play in the research. Pain heals. Chicks dig
scars. And most grad students do not defend their thesis inside four
years (or their dissertation in seven).


.......Politics. This conflict produces the classic funnel tornado.
You\'ll know the damage when you see it! When a professor asks you why
he did not see you at the election day poll he worked just outside
your neighborhood, adding "we really could have used you," just say
you cast an absentee ballot for you prior state of residence and
leave it at that! For crying out loud, do not imply you may not have
voted Democratic!


......Personality. This is the wedge tornado, because to violate this
law of thermodynamics is to invite a storm event with the widest path
of destruction. Do not get personal with your work! Do not get any
bright ideas! You may be excited about teaching for the first time.
But make no mistake, it\'s not really your classroom. You are a
trainee, and you represent the department by proxy. It would help to
think of yourself as the terrycloth equivalent of your practicum
supervisor, even if the practicum supervisor is a wire-mesh pedagogue
at best. (You remember the Harry Harlow experiment). If your teaching
practicum supervisor is a physiological psychologist, do not write a
syllabus that allocates only one lecture to physiological psychology
while allocating four to personality. I don\'t care how expendable the
structure of the ear, do not forget to teach it and test it if it\'s
in all the textbooks. Do not recommend a textbook other than the most
recent edition of Myers that comes standard in the department. And
under no circumstances should you, even in jest, suggest forgoing a
textbook in favor of a packet of original readings! This all goes in
your file! Similarly, abort any claim to creative control, even on
projects you presume to be your own. Indulge your thesis advisor when
he tells you to abandon the exploratory analyses you want to
implement in favor of the usual lineup of t tests, ANOVAs, and
correlations committee members can comprehend on little sleep and
even less interest (in your research). And count yourself lucky your
advisor did not require under the terms of your assistantship that
you propose a thesis that advances his or her own research.


The strongest tornados are those characterized by the greatest
difference in barometric pressure inside and outside the funnel. Just
remember that if the policies, procedures, and prejudices are
exerting strong pressure from outside you, and you do not feel that
pressure, conditions are right for the development of an F-4 or F-5.






Like most tornado victims, I feel very unlucky for having found
myself at any point along a path of destruction as narrow as it is
potent...as potent as it is narrow. A guy just can\'t help but feel
singled-out. And just like a tornado has an internal anatomy of
suction zones and vortices wrapped within the exterior funnel cloud,
so this political adversity is wrapped inside a charged climate of
latent personality conflict & professional training. The \'leading
event,\' which packs a condensed punch of verbal abuse, is wrapped
inside a wider thermodynamic system. You have the latent rising heat,
the personality conflict, that dismissably dim sense that maybe some
of the profs would not like you if they knew more about you. Listen
to that voice inside you! And then, in the path of destruction behind
the tornado, there is a protracted period of probation marked by
sustained tension and vigilance. This is when you assess the damages
and determine whether your standing in the program can be salvaged
(or whether you will drag out the inevitable to the tune of insoluble
loan debt). Just where was this tornado on the Fugita scale? Then you
take stock of faculty expectations and monitor your behavior, molding
it to those expectations. It\'s a skill not unlike hand-eye
coordination. You just have to play a lot of ball to develop the
skill.

Wyatt Ehrenfels, Ph.D.
http://www.fireflySun.com/news.html